Wednesday, September 28, 2011

How to get the most out of Spring Roo development tool

Let me say this upfront -Spring Roo is not a replacement for a developer's technical skills. It'll only help you to be more productive but don't expect the tool to do everything for you.

To get the most out of Spring Roo, you need understanding of the following areas:

1. AspectJ ITDs

2. Maven

3. Spring framework

The first 3 points address the must-haves for using Spring Roo or you
won't be able to understand what's going on when you execute commands.

4. Good understanding of the framework or technology for which you are using Spring Roo to generate code

This is important if you want to modify the code generated by Spring Roo.
For instance, if you don't know Spring Web MVC, then it won't be easy
for you to figure out what you need to change to meet your application's
requirements.

5. Some understanding of OSGi

If you have some understanding of OSGi, then you can easily understand what add-ons are and why Spring Roo follows add-on based architecture. This could also be helpful if you want to get started with developing your custom add-ons.

6. A solid understanding of the code generated by Spring Roo

The code generated by Spring Roo follows best practices and gives a solid foundation for developing your application. This understanding is important if you want to make changes to Roo-generated code to meet specific requirements of your applications.

7. A good understanding of add-ons

Not all features that you need are part of base add-ons provided by Spring Roo. So some understanding of how to install and remove add-ons is helpful. For instance, if there is a Portlet add-on, you need to know how to install it in your Spring Roo installation to create portlets.

8. A good understanding of how Spring Roo works when you execute commands from Roo shell

It is important to know how code generation works in Spring Roo. For instance, add-ons are responsible for managing AspectJ ITDs so you should not modify them.